Who said what in livemeeting

One of the most useful tools I have found in livemeeting is the ability to hover my mouse over the input from my participants to find out who wrote that comment or drew the line. That has helped me initiate a discussion or get some more interaction out of the users by either praising the individual who added some specially good nugget of information or putting somebody on the spot and asking them to explain their answer so everybody understands the reasoning behind it. (which I have deemed to be true and accurate from the comment) Don't abuse this to inflict pain or shame on obviously incorrect answers!

But what about poll questions? Well you won't get around calling into the room for elaboration and comments as you can not see who answered there and then. But you could find out later...

How? Using Poll Reporting you can actually review after the session who answered what to the poll slides. But beware! that only works if you set up the meeting by setting up an event around it first. If you don't use Events, you don't see the reports. That has to do with the fact that you have a whole registration process around events and thus can keep better track of who is doing what with your meetings, recordings and thus, poll slides.

Live meeting and headsets

Some of you might know, that LM2005 does not support VOIP. I.e. you have to use telephone conferencing to hear all participants. And let me guess, you don't have a headset for your telephone. But any bet you have a headset for your computer! Maybe even a bluetooth one for your mobile phone.
So how can we use that headset over a normal telephone line? Can't be done? Oh sure it can. Skype is the answer. Not only can you call anywhere in the world with Skype Out, but even better, toll free numbers are FREE. So you can sit in the sahara desert calling a toll free 0800 number in the uk, usa or germany and not pay a penny for it.
Simply use your existing PC or bluetooth headset with skype and start participating in live meetings around the world without the expense of international phone calls or buying expensive telephone headets.

Just keep in mind that you'll need the extra bandwidth to accommodate both the Live Meeting and the voip conversation side by side. But then, skype uses pretty good compression technology and the overhead is probably not be as much as you might fear.

How to best share multimedia in LM2007

Livemeeting 2007 supports flash files! So instead of using app sharing and speakerphone to capture the audio, which is pretty cumbersome as I prefer using a headset when presenting, I suggest you simply upload the flash files directly to the livemeeting content.
Simply upload the files directly in LM and switch between the slides and the flash when needed. Remember to activate the flash controls before attempting to press pause in the multimedia. Best idea ofcourse is to do a dry run whenever you're presenting. But you knew that already...

If you're planning to record the session and are using conferencing for audio, make sure you have audio and conferencing set up so that both audiostreams are being recorded together, or you'll have some spots of silence in your recording, where the multimedia was playing.

Best Practices Live Meeting Session

Had to get up at an unholy hour today to attend the "Best Practices for Presenting LM2007" session today. I wish I had stayed in bed. They repeated a lot of How To information that was covered in other sessions already and the actual "best practices" bit was rather short. If you attended the e-learning session you really need not go to this one too.
That's all the sessions I'll be attending. If anybody has gone to the ten other ones MS is providing for free, feel free to share your experiences here.

Free Livemeeting Training

So you want to become a MODL exppert in no time? Best bet is to participate in as many Livemeeting sessions as you can. That will give you the confidence and experience you'll need in the classroom environment.
One good way is to attend some instructor led LiveMeeting Session provided courtesy of Microsoft:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/livemeeting/HA102429721033.aspx

I just attended a session with an instructor called Deborah Crohn and it was great. I had already played with LM2007 and eagerly presented and prepared 2273-4-2 but I had never dared to click on the "Public Events" link on the http://www.livemeeting.com/ space, I had set up for evaluation.
Man did I miss out on something. Those events are not necessarily public. And you can only see your events. As event organiser you can create events, registrations, assign meetings, polls, questionnaires and even Evaluations or Tests, which you can then share using the Web Page Sharing Tool in LM2007. Great stuff. Especially for classroom scenarios. The Events section gives you a wealth of personalisation and branding opportunities which mean that you need not go and create complex websites around your e-learning experiences.

How does this translate to MODL? Sadly it does not. for MODL you'll need a customised web site with links to the resources, scenarios and e-learning. But for non MODL courses this could be great!

One other thing. When you're using Conferencing instead of VOIP for the Audio and you wish to create Break-out rooms, you should advise your participants to use the call-back feature if available. Otherwise the audio stream will be a separate Attendee in the meeting. If your students do call in directly, as I did over Skype, then you'll need to identify the person's line in the list and drag that item into the break-out room together with the attendee.

In the image you will see some attendees with a phone next to their name. Those were called back by the system. And then some without a phone, like me. We're the ones which called in directly and need to be merried up manually with our corresponding caller X when creating break-up rooms.

Oh, and this whole concept only works with conferencing providers, which support sub-conferencing or when using voip.

Happy training!

How To upload a LM2005 Presentation to www.livemeeting.com

Yesterday I told you to read my other post on uploading a LM2005 PowerPoint deck to LM2007. Well, I cheated. There was no post. Until now! The following instructions I received from a fellow MCT, who got it from somebody at MSL. No secret, just good advice.

When uploading a PowerPoint presentation that includes Live Meeting 2005 slides, inserted from the Live Meeting 2005 Add-in for PowerPoint, to a Live Meeting 2007 meeting, you may receive an error. The work-around is to convert the PowerPoint (PPT) file to a Live Meeting Presentation (LMP) file, then upload the LMP file to the meeting using the Alternate Uploader.

1. Verify the Live Meeting 2005 Windows-based Meeting Console is installed on your computer. Click on the Live Meeting 2005 Windows-based link to connect to the installation page.Note: Installing the Live Meeting 2005 Windows-based console will not interfere with the Live Meeting 2007 Windows-based console. Each console runs separate of each other.


2. Verify the Live Meeting 2005 Add-in for PowerPoint is installed on a computer running PowerPoint 2003. Click on the Live Meeting 2005 Add-in link to connect to the installation page.


3. Open the presentation in PowerPoint 2003.


4. Convert the PowerPoint (PPT) file to a Live Meeting Presentation (LMP).
   
   
   
   1. In PowerPoint 2003, click Export from the Live Meeting 2005 Add-in.
   
   
   2. Browse to the location you would like to save the file.
   
   
   3. Enter the name of the file.
   
   
   4. Click Save.
   
   
   
   


5. Upload the Live Meeting Presentation (LMP) to a meeting that is already scheduled.
   
   
   
   1. Log into your Live Meeting 2007 conference center.
   
   
   2. Click Meetings under the Manage menu.
   
   
   3. On the Manage Meetings page, click subject of the meeting you would like to upload the file to. This will direct you to the Meeting Details page.
   
   
   4. On the Meeting Details page, on the right-side of the page, click Upload Files under the Action menu. This will direct you the to Upload Files page that contains the Alternate Uploader.
   
   
   5. On the Upload Files page, you will be prompted to install an ActiveX control. The ActiveX control must be installed to upload the file.
   
   
   6. After the ActiveX control is installed click Browse to find the Live Meeting Presentation (LMP) file you created in step 3.
   
   
   7. Click Upload.
   
   
   8. Click Done once all the files have been uploaded.
   
   
   
   


6. Join the meeting as a Presenter and verify all the Live Meeting slides created by the Live Meeting 2005 Add-in for PowerPoint are displaying correctly

The important thing to remember here, is to upload the .lmp file via the web interface. If you try to upload the .ppt or .lmp file via the LM Console, it'll tell you off. Also if you try to upload the .ppt via the web interface. The only combination that worked for me was exported .lmp via web.

Happy uploading!